Thursday, February 15, 2007

Teacher Supervision

Another interesting thought came to me today when I was conducting a teacher supervision… related to professional development. I feel that this experience is one of the best types of pd, and the sad part of this is that only administrators get to benefit from this process. I have observed many competent teachers, and during this process I have reflected on my own practices. I think to myself, “Do I do that? Should I try this?” Today, I thought that why couldn’t we ask teachers to select/partner up with one other staff member and ask them to do a “supervision” of each other. They would not have to submit their evaluations to anyone, just perhaps a record-taking process. That process should include observations followed with discourse, and I think that if they could select their partner(s) they could gain a tremendous amount of insight, ideas and support. This could be a way to build a staff as a team….
Just an idea, perhaps a crazy one…

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this is a great idea! We do something similar to this with our new teachers, but after their first year, we stop. I think it would be a wonderful learning experience to allow teachers to observe each other a couple of times a year and reflect upon what they have seen.

Anonymous said...

I agree. Teachers should be getting into other teacher's rooms and seeing what is happening. They should be visiting a few teachers a year - just to see what other are doing. They don't even need to exchange comments. Just the time spent watching other teachers would be of benefit. As an administrator, I agree that I get to see so many great things going on. It's too bad that we have such a negative atmosphere around supervision in many places. We really need to work on making it a positive experience.